Do You Really Want To? | Rev. John Riley

Well, good morning.  So, one question for you – do you really want to do it anyway?  I mean, seriously, sometimes it’s a little difficult, yeah?  Sometimes.  Do you really want to change?  Do you really want to grow?  Do you really want to achieve those goals and dreams that you have?  Do you really want to live into that expression of Spirit that is yours to express in this world, allowing that divine essence to flow as you?  

It’s not a multiple-choice question.  It is okay.  You know, sometimes it gets a little rough so today what we are going to talk about is this idea because we have been going through this last month’s practices.  We have been dodging and weaving obstacles, we have been looking deep inside ourselves for little acts of courage to motivate us on our way.  We have been becoming resol — ugh, I can’t remember the name now.  Resound, resilient.  No, that’s the last one – resolved!  I am resolved in mind, ardent in heart, and resilient in our expression of life.  And we have learned that we are always creating every step of the way with every thought.  We are creating, so it might make sense to align those thoughts with Spirit.  Today what we are going to do is dive into the deep spiritual practice, “I AM available”.  I AM available.

Would you affirm that with me?  

Together:  

I AM available.

Let Go and Let God

We need some work.  So, as we go through this practice, what does “I AM available” really mean?  Well, the Daily Word today was perfect for today.  I don’t know, I don’t know how they get it right every time.  It just aligns with my talk.  They are really good back there at Unity Village.  Let go and let God.  Let go and let God.  Let go and let God, that idea of letting go and just allowing Spirit to guide us.  Letting go and allowing that divine wisdom to guide us along the way.  So, when we come upon an obstacle and we’re wondering how to get around it, we let go and we let God.  Now, when you hear those words, “let go and let God”, or “release”, what is the energy level?  Just think about the energy level within you.  Just allow it to permeate you.  Let go and let God. 

Okay now I want you to go back to the affirmation, “I AM available”.

Let’s affirm that again.

Together:  

I AM available

Do you sense a little difference of energy within you?  I see some people nodding.  Yeah.  Now letting go is resigning.  It’s like, “I don’t know the answer.  I don’t know my next step, so God please show me my next step.”  As we are learning in our prayer class, our affirmative prayer class, what we’re coming from when we say, “God, help me. What’s my next step?” is a sense of not knowing our next step.  It’s coming from that place of lack, coming from a place of “I don’t know”.  It still works but we’re coming at it from a weaker perspective.  

Open to Possibilities

And so, when we come at it from that perspective of lack, then there is lack coming back within the answer.  When we say and use the practice, “I AM available for my next highest good; I AM available for my next step along my path; I AM available for what is next for me”, that opens us up to possibilities.  It creates a different energy and so that energy that we are putting out, now there is lots of that energy coming back, lots of opportunities, lots of possibilities, only by saying “I AM available, universe”.  

Now, there are some caveats with this.  This is a non-competitive “I am available”.  It doesn’t mean it is me versus someone else.  It’s for the highest and best of my good which would be the highest and best of the world, of everyone in it.  I AM available for my next step.  

So, I was practicing that this week.  I AM available.  I AM available.  I AM available.  I AM available.  By Thursday I’m like, this ain’t working.  Then I am like, as soon as I said this ain’t working it’s like “Whppsshhh, come on Riley”.  I have had like ten ideas pop up this week.  June had a great idea that she sent to me.  Lisa had a great idea.  Kent … well.  Some of them were even mine.  Or at least I thought they were mine but here is the thing, those ideas there are not yours.  You don’t own them.  All we can do is take hold of them and say, “Yes, I am going to take this idea and move forward with it”.  I know for certain if you don’t, someone else will.  I have had great ideas, great thoughts, great perceptions around spirituality and how to move things and then I am like, well, I just don’t know yet.  Three months later someone else came out with the same thing.  Newman.  Sorry, that was a Seinfeldism.  It’s been a while.  I AM available.  

So, there are four steps I think — is that right? – to “I AM available”.  

The First Step – Willing

The first step is being willing.  Five, there are five steps.  Being willing, the first step is being willing, being willing to open up, being willing to be available, because sometimes it goes back to that question.  Here is my goal but do I really want it?  Here is where I want to head, but do I really want to take the effort to step in that direction?  It’s kind of comfortable where I am right now.  There is my dream and if I don’t make any progress, if I don’t go any closer, then guess what I have — a great story about how hard it is.  Don’t you feel bad for me?  Aren’t you feeling a little?  No?  Okay.  So, are you willing?  Are you willing to look at yourself and look at those thoughts and look at how you are living your life and how you are moving into that experience?  Are you willing to look for that courageous act that is within you, to just say “Yes, I am going to move one step forward; I am going to keep moving even though it seems hard right now”?  Are you willing to move into this spiritual practice?  

The Second Step -Receptive

Then, once you are willing, the next step – Oh, I have a quote.  Don’t I have a quote?  Yes.  — Charles Fillmore in the early twenties.  This is one of his miscellaneous writings.  He said, “One of the surest signs that a person is no longer in bondage is his willingness to give others freedom”.  Am I willing to allow myself to experience my good?  Am I willing to allow others to experience their good too?  Sometimes we look at other people and it’s like “Well, if you’ll only do this.  If you only follow my path because I am right, of course.  I went to seminary.”  It’s funny because I actually didn’t go to seminary.  We will get to that later.  

Receptive.  Are you willing to be receptive?  Once we are willing to step into it, we have to become receptive to all that the universe has to offer us and so often, we are looking for the answer in a very specific way.  We want this person to do that thing, on this date, at this time.  Nope, they blew it.  Where’s my good, right?  Be receptive because these ideas come from all over and the more receptive you are, the more “I AM available” you are, the more that you are able to perceive, the more that you are able to move towards, the more that you are able to make a part of your life, the more that is there.  

Now, there are some who will argue whether you are drawing more to you or you are drawing yourself to it.  I think you are opening your consciousness up to all of the possibilities the universe has to offer and then you have the opportunity.  But you have to be receptive in order to see them.  Lao Tzu — sorry, in the Tao Te Ching — Lao Tzu said, receptivity as a valley.  “Become as receptive as a valley, clear as a glass of water.  Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles and your water is clear?”  Can you become that receptive?  That is a beautiful metaphor.  As you are seeing, as you are envisioning that valley and the beautiful river coming downstream, beautiful rivers, after a while, they’re crystal clear.  But most of us have mud in that water.  It’s like the river that’s down the stream, way down the stream.  That is our consciousness, filled with that mud of “I’m not there yet”, filled with that mud of lack or resentment.  Can you, do you have the patience enough to simply be receptive enough to see, to have that clear water?  It doesn’t take as long as it takes a river.  We are working with consciousness and time does not matter.  It may seem like it takes a long time, that’s only because we are not willing to let go of it.  But once you are willing to let go of it, you see that sparkly water just appears.  When it appears, you grasp it, you look into it, you find the opportunity.  So be receptive as that crystal clear water.  

The Third Step – Grateful

The third step is to be grateful.  Now, normally gratitude is at the end.  Normally it’s like, “OK, I got my thing, thank you”.  You got your thing.  What that thing was, was an idea.  That is the currency of Spirit.  An idea, every idea that comes to you, thank you, thank you.  Because you know when you become grateful, it opens us up even more to greater good, to greater things.  We are now swimming in that clear stream of water with our gratitude.  Thank you for that idea, all ideas because — oh, I have a quote for that too.  This is from John, the Gospel according to John, chapter 16, verse 24, “Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive so that your joy may be complete”.  Ask.  And the ask that we ask is that I AM available.  I am ready.  Bring it on.  It’s like that job interview that you went to.  And you’re like “oh gosh I am not ready for this and guess what, they knew it” versus the job interview that you went and was like, “I’m ready and now I have three offers.  I am ready.  I AM available and now I have three ideas.  I have three projects.  I have three opportunities”.  

The Fourth Step – Discerning

And now comes the fourth step which is discernment, because you don’t have to take everything that’s given to you.  You don’t have to pick up every opportunity.  Discernment about what the opportunity is because as soon as the divine inspiration pops in, as soon as that divine idea comes to us, guess what.  It’s our filter that is interpreting it.  So, I am saying, “this is what I am hearing; this is what I am guided to do”.  So, discern.  Take that into your time of meditation and affirmative prayer.  Take that into a time of just letting it lie, of investigating it, of discerning “is this the right thing for me, is this the right direction?” because there might be some ideas that are like, “No thank you.  Thank you and I’m going to pass.  That is not right for me now”.  

Now, if you get that idea coming back to you over and over again, through multiple people and multiple channels, then maybe you ought to listen to it.  That is Spirit saying, that is the universe saying, “Hey, hey, this is it.  How many times do I have to tell you?  Here we are.”  So, listen to what is being offered to you by the universe and discern “Is this the right for me and how is it right for me?  How can I move forward in it?  How can I adopt this and what is my part to play?  What is my role in it?”  All you have to do is ask.  

So, discernment draws from us this power of faith, activates this power of faith within us.  In Unity, we call this a power.  We call this an attribute.  It’s something that you have within you.  It’s your ability to move forward even if you don’t know the outcome.  It’s your ability to shape substance and bring forth, bring into manifestation, to create your world even if you are not sure of the outcome.  It activates your faith, discernment.  Eric Butterworth in his book, Practical Metaphysics, says “faith in moving at the highest level of vibration so that we can begin to experience wonderful things in a normal, natural, easily discernible way.  For example, living with a license of a higher order of beings”.  So, the more we discern that path the more we are able to see that “Hey, this is normal.  My good is here, now, all the time ready for me.  All I have to do is say yes and move forward”.  

The Fifth Step – Willing

That brings us to our fifth step, willing.  We’re back to willing.  We had to be willing to step into the process, now we have to be willing to move the process forward.  In our prayer class we talk about this because God cannot do anything for you.  God doesn’t do.  Everyone, take a deep breath.  Oh dear.  Hit some buttons.  God can do no more for you than God can do as you.  You are the hands and the feet.  You must bring it forward.  It’s up to you to say yes.  So, the willingness here is a willingness to simply step forward and to take that next step, knowing in faith that the step after that will be provided, knowing in faith that as you move in this direction with confident expectations your good will be assured because you are moving forward.  You are not stuck anymore.  

In Isiah, chapter 55, verse 9, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts”.  So, in other words, so are these ideas, these divine inspirations that come to us.  They are higher than even my interpretation of them.  They are higher and they are better than my thinking that I need to do X, Y, and Z before I can go anywhere first.  These inspirations are higher than us and all we have to do is take hold of them and move forward with them and be willing to step into that level of faith.  

As I was growing up in Unity — I was in Unity when I was a Y.O.U.-er, as a teenager, as a high schooler, and I got really involved in Unity.  I was a chapter President.  I was a regional representative and I just went to convention five years in a row.  Which means nothing to you unless you were in Y.O.U., the International convention at Unity Village.  Whoop whoop.  It was a part of me and after that I knew this is my path, this is what I need to do.  I am going to do it.  I am going to become a minister.  Yeah, but I’m going to go to college first.  And then I’m going to get a job.  And then all of that was put aside.  When I got back here fifteen, sixteen years ago and started taking classes again, like AH!  It came back.  That idea came back.  

Now, yes, mom and my cousin, Joyce, were always reminding me, “You are going to be a minister someday”.  “Okay.  In the meantime, I am going to go earn my burnt orange McLaren”.  So here I am.  No burnt orange McLaren.  No, I do have a burnt orange McLaren.  I do.  I have two.  It’s one this big and then I have one that’s this big.  Two.  I am so powerful.  Anyway.  So, as I started going back, I started taking classes to become a licensed Unity teacher because the path that I was taking was not through seminary which was a two-to-three-year process.  My path was in the field, here.  So, I studied here.  I went to Hawaii for internships.  I visited other centres along the way to understand how they do business, and the path was get your license to be a Unity teacher first, be a teacher for a year, then you can start the field licensing program.  As I am going into that process, a couple years into it, I’m like “My God, this is going to be, this is a nine-year process.  I’ve got friends who already graduated.  They are ministers.  What am I doing?”  Then as soon as I asked that question, “Whppsshhh. Riley, it doesn’t matter.  You’re doing the work.  You are walking the path.  Forget about the title.  Just keep walking.”  In that instant there was clear water for me.  

Creative Expression

Every class that I took, not every class but some classes, had this creative expression as a component of the class.  So, at one point we could do anything uniquely creative and usually what I would do is I would get a piece of paper and I would do a drawing.  That is my creative expression, to express and get in the flow of what I am learning here.  Almost all the time my drawing was a picture of the sunset on the ocean.  With my art skills, there was a piece of paper, there was a straight line, and there was a half circle.  I coloured it in with some colours.  Then I made the little water because the water was rippling and then at the very bottom there was this little tiny stick figure going like this.  That was my, “I AM available”.  

When my daughter Erin — I think this was six or seven years ago.  She was still in high school, I think, so maybe more — but when she was, she asked me — this was a gift for me – “What would you like?  I would like you to paint something for you.  What can I paint for you?”  So, I gave her that little stick figure.  Here it is.  And this is what she created, this incredible painting.  And you’ll notice there is no stick figure there.  She is like “Well, you know, I wasn’t too sure about how to do that so I thought you could just put that on the wall, and you could be the stick figure.  You can stand in front of it.”  So that is what I do.  It’s in my office hanging on the wall and every once in a while I will stand up and say “I am available, to the universe, to beauty, to joy, to opportunity, to potential.”  

I AM Available

Let’s all try it.  Use our painting.  Everyone, stand up.  I know it’s wacky if you are new.  I’m sorry.  But you’ll live, I think.  Now arms out, try not to hit your neighbour.  I AM available.  Together:  

I AM available

Now there is an exclamation point at the end, isn’t there?  Nope.  I am putting one there.  

I AM available

Together:  

I AM available!

Yes.  Can you feel that energy flowing through you now, being connected, being open, being willing to receive?  When the ideas come you can discern them and then you can decide what you want to do.  I am going to walk down here to get my clicker.  As we are going to move to the affirmation.  You can keep standing since you are all standing and you are available, and if you feel comfortable.  This is a power pose you know.  Have you heard about those?  So, some of you have.  So, if you stand like this it’s like you know, it’s a power pose.  It creates a sense of energy within you and it’s been scientifically proven, I think.  This is another one.  It’s like touchdown yeah.  This is another one, Rusty is doing it.  This is an easier one.  My favourite, I’m not going to go off camera but my favourite is sitting down, putting your legs up and going like this.  It’s another one.  I’m going to read our affirmation and then I’m going to invite you to affirm it with me.  

I AM open and receptive to the gifts and opportunities presented to me.  With wisdom, strength, and faith, I say “Yes!” to that which is mine to do!  I AM available!

You are welcome to raise your hands or put your hands on your hips, get into that power pose. Together:  

I AM open and receptive to the gifts and opportunities presented to me.  With wisdom, strength, and faith, I say “Yes!” to that which is mine to do!  I AM available!

And so it is.  

Thank you all for being here today.  

Prayer for Protection

And now our Prayer for Protection.  Together:  

“The Light of God surrounds us;

The Love of God enfolds us;

The Power of God protects us;

The Presence of God watches over us;

Wherever we are, God is!

And, all is well.

Love and blessing everyone, have a wonderful week, Namaste.